Too Many Systems Create Chaos In The Sales Channel

Are you at a point where your operations are suffocating under the weight of all your software systems?

This is a relatively common problem these days, especially among companies who've been continually trying to stay on top of modern technology for the last ten or twenty years. For the longest time, B2B software was very much in a "wild west" state of affairs with few standards in place and incapabilities at the fore front. In many cases, businesses ended up building their own point solutions that worked for a single internal need, but weren't compatible with other homegrown solutions or the needs of their business partners.

This presents a major problem when it comes time to collaborating with independent businesses and organizations who are part of your larger channel partner ecosystem. If a group hasn't planned ahead for inter-compatibility with other systems, they could be facing significant hurdles for channel sales communications and collaboration.

Ad-hoc systems built up over the years could easily be weighing you down, making your company harder to do business with than the competition.

Systems integration is key.

Today, for a company with a diverse partner ecosystem to succeed, they need software tools capable of working with the entire ecosystem. Systems integration is key, and this isn't simply a matter of personal convenience. A partner system today needs to be flexible and responsive, able to respond quickly to shifts in the marketplace or the global socio-economic environment.

Some of the must-haves include:

A database system that allows access from multiple users at multiple locations.

Standardized document and other media formats which everyone involved can read and write.

A single unified communications system which all channel partners have access to.

A cloud-based storage system that gives universal permissions-based access to whatever materials a partner needs.

Unified training systems that ensure everyone is on the same page, when it comes to proper behavior and promotion of your product/service.

Being able to provide such a software system would make any business far easier to work with. Beyond making life simpler for your own channel manager, it also makes life easier for every partner in the ecosystem.

Make it easy for your sales reps.

There’s nothing more frustrating to sales partners than having their sales reps log in and out of multiple systems to do their job. Before you know it, a sales rep has encountered multiple systems to register a lead, look up product information and pricing, find collateral for a customer, get questions answered, register a sale, etc. If the channel partner represents several brands (including your competition which is often the case), this challenge gets exponentially worse for the sales rep.

In the real world sales reps will stick to selling the product line that’s easiest to sell. Part of making it easy is the system environment that’s provided to support the sales rep. Leading manufacturers provide a single sign-on environment through partner portal technology such that the sales rep merely needs to log into the portal once, get his/her credentials validated, then – through the portal interface – seamlessly access all of the other systems he/she needs to access to get the job done.

Consider Partner Relationship Management (PRM).

PRM is a single unified source for everything a partner needs to be successful. PRM is mostly or entirely cloud-hosted, with permissions-based access, and standardizes all functions where cross-talk and collaboration are vital. It truly creates a one-stop resource for channel partners.

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